For many years, laces have been used to help secure footwear, such as boots, shoes, skates and the like, onto the feet of the user. A typical boot includes first and second instep flaps that extend up the sides of the boot and are separated by a space. Usually, the flaps extend from a point close to the toe of the boot and extend rearwardly to the front surface of the ankle portion of the boot. Each of the first and second instep flaps includes or carries a series of eyelets adjacent the space between them. A single lace is generally interwoven into the eyelets. By threading a lace through the eyelets and pulling on the ends of the lace, the eyelets and the instep flaps can be pulled together in the space between them to thus tighten the flaps, and hence the boot, around the foot of a user. After the flaps are tightened, the ends of the lace are tied together to hold the boot on the foot of the user.
When the user wishes to remove his boot, the lace ends are untied, and the lace can be loosened, permitting loosening of the instep flaps, that is, increasing the space between the first and second flaps. This increased space between and the first and second flaps loosens the boot, thus permitting the user to remove it from his foot. One difficulty with footwear lacing systems, is that it is often difficult to tighten the footwear by pulling the flaps together with the lace and to maintain a tightened condition.
In many applications, it is desirable, if not essential, to secure a boot snugly onto the foot of a user. Two examples of such applications are with ice skates (including figure, speed and hockey skates) and roller skates (both regular and in-line). With ice skates and roller skates, it is essential to have the boot of the ice skate fastened tightly around the ankle, so that the boot can provide ankle support to the user. This ankle support is necessary in order to ensure good skating performance. Additionally, in certain other applications, it is also essential to fasten a boot about a user's ankle tightly in order to give the user proper ankle support. Further, certain users, as a matter of individual preference, prefer to wear boots which are snugly secure to their feet, to provide appropriate ankle support.
Several known methods exist for tightly lacing a boot onto a foot. Typically, a boot lace is tightened by having the user start with one pair of the lower eyelets of the instep flaps of the boot and, using two hands (or fingers), to grip the lace adjacent a pair of eyelets and to pull the pair of eyelets toward with the lace to tighten the instep flaps at the particular pair of eyelets. The same procedure is then repeated with the next eyelet "up the boot" in the rearward direction while trying to maintain the tightened condition of the first pair of eyelets. This procedure is repeated again and again until the lace has been used to tighten each pair of eyelets. Upon reaching the last pair of eyelets the user then attempts to quickly tie the ends of the lace together and preserve the tightness of the lacing, before the instep flaps have had a chance to move apart through slippage between the lace and the eyelets.
This method has some drawbacks. First, it is difficult to pull the laces tightly at the eyelets. In addition, as the user attempts to tighten each pair of eyelets with the lace, the lace can slip in one or more pairs of eyelets that were tightened earlier, permitting the instep flaps to move apart and the boot to thus become relatively loosened. There is no structure known presently which permits one to pull the lace at a particular eyelet, and then to prevent the lace from slipping or retreating backwardly, other than for the user to maintain his or her grip on the lace.
In addition to the method described above, various other methods have been attempted for tightening laces. For example, some people use a mechanical "pick" or "puller" to gain a better mechanical advantage on a lace, and thus be able to pull it tighter. Even with this system, however, when force pressure is released on the particular portion of the lace being pulled, the lace can slip or retreat back in an eyelet to a relatively looser portion.
Another difficulty which often faces one trying to tighten one's boot laces is the frictional resistance on the movement of the lace caused by the frictional engagement between the lace and the tongue, especially in the region where the lace becomes sandwiched between the eyelet-containing instep flaps of the shoe and the tongue.